Does GDPR have the CX-Factor?

It's that time of year again, yes that's right when reality TV goes nuts here in the UK with shows like 'The X factor' wrapping up the finals with the wannabe Christmas number 1 for the music charts.

While not being a huge fan of the show despite my love of music (or maybe because of it) It did get me thinking about the term 'X-factor', the google dictionary definition describes it as "a variable in a given situation that could have the most significant impact on the outcome"

I was speaking at the BigDataLDN event recently and this year we had an exceptional coffee barista, Sam, on the Qlik stand. Not only did Sam supply great coffee, he was also a fascinating chap to speak to. I was mesmerised watching him effortlessly create delicate patterns in the foam of every cup of coffee he dispensed, despite an ever-increasing queue of people patiently waiting throughout the event.

Sam informed me that extra touch can make all the difference, because people eat with their eyes, that extra 10 secs or so spent crafting pleasing shapes in the coffee all adds up to the total experience. In Sam's words "a well-presented cup of coffee tastes better than if it was just poured into a plastic cup, it's all about the experience!"

I'm totally with Sam, it is the same in business too! When you deliver a great experience for your customers, you increase their satisfaction and build loyalty.

Every organisation today is a data company. We have at our finger tips a vast amount of data that, when used responsibility, can be used to deliver better experiences for our customers. In the GDPR era it is vital to be more open and honest in how you use personal data.

In the run up to GDPR we saw a tsunami of emails flooding our inboxes asking us to continue receiving marketing information, some of these campaigns were more relevant and refreshing than others, such as ASOS, The Guardian and Manchester United.

Under the GDPR it still possible to deliver better tailored and personalised journeys for your customers, provided you have the right controls in place.

If you can gleam customer intelligence, insights from the data can enable you to better understand your customers. Your organisation can view them from being just revenue and profit figures on a spreadsheet to becoming real people with real needs. Because when your customers experience the feeling that you know what's important for them and what problems you can help them solve, you have the beginnings of a beautiful relationship.

Having a solid analytics platform that allows you to freely explore all your data will help you find these meaningful and actionable insights quicker. It is also important to have a good data literacy program in place to help your people better understand the language of data, to be able to ask the right questions from it and begin to speak data fluently.

In today’s digital world it’s all about the cX-Factor - when you lead with good and proper use of data, transformation will follow, enabling you to deliver great customer experiences which gain trust, and build more meaningful and longer lasting relationships. Now that’s worth singing about!

Thanks for reading my blogs this year – Happy Holidays and I hope to see you again for more musings in 2019.

It’s all about the cX-Factor @adammayerwrk explores how #data can be used in the GDPR era to deliver great #customerexperience